


do i dare to eat a peach?

by fitzchivalryfarseer



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: F/F, First Kiss, Oh No There Is Only One Bed What Will Teddy Do: The Fic, Only One Bed, Romantic Tension, There is no smut, but not more than you'd expect from a greys fic, mentions of surgical procedures and blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-12 13:50:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21477421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fitzchivalryfarseer/pseuds/fitzchivalryfarseer
Summary: "Just sleep on Yang's bunk," Karev says, like it's easy, and overturns her whole world.
Relationships: Teddy Altman/Cristina Yang
Comments: 17
Kudos: 125





	do i dare to eat a peach?

**Author's Note:**

> Title from TS Eliot's 'The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock', which I love dearly.

_There’s not going to be space,_ Teddy thinks, and hopes anyway, because she’s been up for a disgustingly long time and hope for a bed is most of what’s keeping her upright. 

But she can see Cristina passed out on the bottom bunk, her hair still up in a bun, and the collection of dim shapes on the top bunk resolves into a person when she cracks the door open a little wider and lets some light through. 

“Mmmmrgh,” the top bunk says angrily. Metal shrieks briefly as Alex Karev twists around. “You gonna close that door?”

“You planning to get up any time soon?” 

Karev squints at her. “No.” He flops back down.

She stands there a minute, on the threshold of the dark room. The light of the hallway feels like it will blind her if she turns around. 

Karev groans. “Just-” he gestures, hampered by his blanket. The bed whines at the movement. “Sleep on Yang’s bunk.”

It takes her a second to process that one. “What?”

“Sleep or don’t,” Karev says, his words muffled as he rolls over. “I don’t care, but shut up so I can get some fucking shut eye.”

She closes the door behind her. She doesn’t know why. In the silence she is caught, hovering, mid-step forward. 

Cristina is a few feet away, just across the narrow room. One word from Teddy and she would plunge into any surgery, wrench a chest cavity open, slice cleanly between ribs for a thoracotomy. 

Teddy pictures it, Cristina’s fingers twisting, slick, between muscle and bone, her hands sliding beneath the skin. The heat of her urgency.

Her heart is pounding. Somehow she’s crossed the room, knelt next to the bed.

“Budge over, Yang,” she says. Her voice lifts slightly on Yang, makes it almost a question as she waits on her knees. 

Cristina rolls towards the wall, wrapping herself in blanket as she goes. Teddy climbs on carefully, the mattress dipping beneath her, and stretches out. The sheets are warm where Cristina was.

Teddy stares up at the bunk above them and tries to resist turning to face Cristina. Her nerves are humming, a slow fizz down across the bones, delicately suspended beneath skin.

Cristina shifts next to her, reaching up and grabbing her wrist. “Breathe,” she says, half-asleep. 

Her hand curling around Teddy’s wrist is enough for her to ground herself. She gauges the pressure of it, firm against her skin, and closes her eyes. 

Someone’s pager goes off sometime in the dark hours and for a few seconds all Teddy hears is the pager beeping and cloth rustling and the bed grumbling around them as Karev flips around. 

“It’s not yours,” Teddy says to Cristina, squinting at the bright and empty screen of her pager where it’s stuck in one of her sneakers. Cristina’s flailing arm, tangled up with blankets and Teddy, comes to a stop. Teddy arches her back to get to her pager, next to Cristina’s, fingers scrabbling across the floor and the weight of Cristina’s arm on her stomach. 

“Not mine.” She turns over again and stops short, her breath catching, because between both of them reaching for their pagers Cristina’s moved up against her, so close that Teddy’s acutely self-conscious about not brushing her teeth last night. 

One of Cristina’s hands moves up between them, suddenly, and Teddy braces to push herself backwards. But she brings it to her own face, and Teddy gets almost dizzy with relief when she realises she’s just pushing back a curl of hair. 

She reaches out. Her hand fits over Cristina’s. 

The ladder at their feet clangs, and Karev grunts, “Pager’s mine,” as he shuffles his way heavily down. “Robbins wants me in the pit.”

Cristina doesn’t move under Teddy’s hand. They’re so close that if the lights were on she’d be looking right into her eyes, watching the emotions playing out in the dark of them.

Instead she has the warmth of Cristina’s hand under hers, the dip of the mattress with their breaths, the length of their legs pressed together. Somewhere behind them, Karev leaves, and then she has Cristina moving, her hand flipping around Teddy’s, palm against the back of her wrist and fingers wrapping around, pressing into radius and ulna. In the pads of her fingers she could read Teddy’s heartbeat if she wanted to, cut through all her pretenses as easy as a scalpel splitting skin. 

“You could move up to Alex’s bunk,” Cristina says, her words lacking the usual sharp edge. A little current of tension runs underneath, and Teddy reads _challenge invitation question_ and then she stops, and she dares. 

“Do you want me to?”

Cristina draws in a slow, ragged breath. Teddy holds hers, hard in her lungs. 

Then, “No,” Cristina says, simply, and surges forward, and their lips meet.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Cookies & Quickies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23878315) by [bobbiejelly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bobbiejelly/pseuds/bobbiejelly)


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